LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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CRITICISMS BY J. N. BARKER, 



KXSTOHXCAI. FACTS 



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BY JAMES MEASE, M. D. 

»I£MBER OF THE PENN SOCIETV Or PHILADELPHIA 



FtlTLADEXPHIA : 

Clark <(y RascT) Printers, 33 Carter's .lllty. 
1828, 






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REPLY, &c. 



To the Penn Society. 

In the notes which Mr, Barker has added to his Address 
delivered before the Penn Society, on our anniversary, 
October 24, 1827, he has criticised several passages in my 
Picture of Philadelphia, impugned my accuracy, and denied 
some of my historical facts respecting the early events on the 
Delaware. As I took great pains to collect the materials for 
the compilation of the few pages of notices I have given re- 
specting those events, and the early history of Pennsylvania, 
I was much concerned at his remarks; and have therefore 
again consulted the various works from which I obtained the 
materials for the statements I have given, in order to ascertain 
whether I had committed any error. The result has been, 
a full confirmation of all my positions, (with one trifling ex- 
ception,) and this I shall now prove, to the entire satisfac- 
tion, as I hope, of our Society. 

I. The first criticism to which I shall reply, is as follows, 
p. 14. 

" Dr. Mease, in Picture of Philadelphia, p. 2, says that Lord 
Delaware discovered and named the bay after himself, in 
1610. I can find no authority for this." 

My authorities were, — 1. Dr. Douglass, who says — "Sir 
Walter Raleigh having forfeited his patent by his attainder, 
anno 1606, several adventurers petitioned the king for grants. 
The company did not thrive; and, anno 1609, they surren- 
dered their charter, and a new patent was issued in the name 
of the Treasurer and Council. This new company appointed 
Lord Delaware general, or governor, by approbation of the 
crown. By mistake of the mariners, he fell in with Penn- 



4 

sylvania Bay, instead of Cliesapeake, or Virginia Bay? and 
gave name to it, which it retains to this day."* 

2. Acrelius also says that Lord D. gave his name to the bay 
and river. t The authority of this writer is deemed high by 
Mr. B. 

3. Campanius Holm also mentions that Lord D. discovered 
the bay 4 

These were my authorities for the account I have given of 
the discovery and naming of the bay and river Delaware. 
The respectability of the two last will not be doubted by 
Mr. B., because he frequently refers to them in his Address; 
and I am not in the least uneasy as to the degree of reliance 
which he may attach to the first, although he is quite as much, . 
nay, more entitled to credit, than Ogilby, who is quoted by 
Mr. B. "as worthy of attention." My object is to show, 
that I did not invent the story of the discovery of the bay, 
by Lord D., and his naming it after himself; and that if Mr. 
B. "could find no authority" for these facts, I can. 

Subsequent researches have confirmed what 1 had stated. 
Ebeling says, " Lord D. discovered the bay on his voyage to 
Virginia, and gave it name :"§ and De Vries, when he went 
to Virginia for provisions in 1633, after the massacre of the 
Dutch settlers on the Delaware, by the Indians, was told by 
the governor, " that the south bay was by them [the Eng- 
lish] named my Lord Delaware's Bay, who some years ago, 
was forced in there by bad weather, but that having found 
that place full of banks, they had never looked after it again, 
but that nevertheless it was their king's land, and not New 
Netherlands."!! This shows at least, that the belief of the 



" Douglass' Summary Hist, anil Pol. of the British Settlements in N. A. 
Vol. 2cl, p. 390. Boston, 1751. 

f Acount of" the Swedish Congregation, in the so called Ne*r Sweden, 
p. 3. Stockholm, 1759. 

+ Nya Swerige, p. 28. 

§ History of Pennsylvania, p. 127. 

II De Vries' Journal, in 4to. Alkmaar, 1665, in Du Simitiere's MSS. Col- 
lection of the Library Company of Philadelphia. 



visit of Lord D. to the river was general among the En- 
glish. 

I shall make no comment upon the circumstance of the 
Journal of De Vries, and of the works by Holm and Acre- 
lius, having been quoted, and I presume, therefore, examined, 
by Mr. B., nor upon his saying " he could find no authority" 
for what I had stated, after giving us reason to believe that 
he had consulted one of the works I mention, and another, 
in which the testimony of this last is confirmed. The fact 
of Lord D. having entered the bay, is as well establislied as 
any other respecting the history of the United States. He 
arrived in Virginia, June 9, 1610, the year after Hudson, in 
Ihc Half Moon, had been there,* and may probably have en- 
tered the bay in the month of May, of the same year. Now, 
as it was impossible for him to obtain the knowledge of Hud- 
son's visit to the same water. Lord D.'s visit was substantially 
a discovery, and he may therefore have deemed himself jus- 
tified in giving his name to the bay, in conformity to the prac- 
tice of voyagers, who call countries, bays, straits, sounds, and 
rivers, which they first discover, or think they first disco- 
vered, after themselves. Hudson, Bheering, Frobisher, Lan- 
caster, Davis, and Baffin, are cases in point, and a hundred 
others might be mentioned. Some have immortalized them- 
selves in this way, for supposed discoveries, to which they 
had no just title; of this Amerigo Vespucci is a striking 
example. 

n. The second criticism respects the etymology of the 
word "Schuylkill." Mr. B. says— " The idea of Dr. M., 
that in all probability its low Dutch appellation was derived 
from the circumstance of the secret settlements of the peo- 
ple of Maryland on its shores, is not happy." 

If not " happy," it would have been but fair to give the 
whole paragraph, instead of a part only, because it would 
then be seen, that if one explanation of the name could not 

• Hudson's visit to the b.iy is noticed in tlie Picture of Philadelphia, p. 2. 



6 

be sustained, I was right in another; and that the etymology 
at least, of the word, was perfectly " happy;" so happy, that 
Mr. B. himself has adopted it in p. 16. 

In page 19, of the Picture of Philadelphia, I say — " Most 
of our rivers retain their Indian names; but Schuylkill signi- 
fies, in Low Dutch, * hidden river,^ or ' hiding river,' an 
appellation derived, in all probability, from the circumstance 
of the secret settlements of the people of Maryland upon its 
shores, or from its running into the interior, beyond the 
researches of the settlers.'' 

I obtained the knowledge of the etymology of the word 
Schuylkill in the following way : — Upon mentioning to my 
amanuensis, who understood Low Dutch, that I had heard 
the late Dr. Barton say, " the word Schuylkill was the only 
name of all our rivers, the derivation of which puzzled him, 
as it was certainly not Indian;" he said, it was comj)osed of 
two words, " schuyl," hidden, and " kill," creek. I then 
recollected, that in New York, there were many streams to 
which the word kill* is attached to some preceding word, to 
denote their size, locality, or some other circumstance, and 
relying upon the knowledge of the Dutch language by my 
clerk, for the meaning of the word " schuyl," I ventured to 
give the English of the compound, " iiidden," or " hiding 
river." I was giatificd afterwards to find liiat Chalmerst and 
Proudt gave the same etymology of the word Schuylkill. It 
certainly was no unreasonable supposition, that the Dutcii called 
the river " hiding," from the circumstance of the secret settle- 
ments of the Marylanders upon its shores, fiom which, it is 
well known, they weredriven, in 1042, by a force in two sloops, 
sent b}' Keift, the governor of New Netherlands :§ but as this is 
not deemed a '' happy idea," by Mr. B., he must be content- 
ed with the other, and probably the just, explanation, but 
which he has thought jjroper to omit. Had Mr. B. not been 

• Kline-kill, Kaader's-kill, Kaats-kiil, &c. &c. 

t Political Annals, p. 632, + Vol. 2, p. 251. 

f) Picture of Philadelphia, p. 4 — and Proud, vol. i. p. 110. 



disposed to find fault, he would have given both, and quoted 
me fully. As he is in the daily practice of dispensing 
justice between man and man, it is to be regretted, that he 
should have evinced a disposition to withhold it on the pre- 
sent occasion. 

III. I state that Sven Scutz, the commander of Fort Casi- 
mir, on the present site of New Castle, when taken by the 
Dutch, in 1654 or 1655, had "lost a leg in the Dutch service." 
Mr. B. says that " it was Stuyvesant, his conqueror, who had 
lost a leg in the Dutch service:" insinuc^^ing, in course, that 
Sven had fortunately saved his limb. I distinctly remem- 
ber to have met with the fact of a similar misfortune having 
occurred to Sven, in two of the numerous works which I 
consulted, when compiling the historical notices of the early 
settlements on the Delaware, and I considered it as well es- 
tablished as any other I have recorded; but the most diligent 
researches have not enabled me to find the fact again. The 
circumstance was coupled with an apology for his tame sub- 
mission to the Dutch, and mentioned to show that he had 
been a soldier, and therefore did not yield from cowardice, 
but from a conviction of the inutility of resistance to an 
overwhelming force ; and this apology which I made for him, 
was suggested by one of the authors, to whom I was indebted 
for the fact. I now think he was not entitled to it. 

IV. Mr. B. says— "It was on the 2Sth August, 1609, 
while coasting northwardly, not southwardly, (see Picture of 
Philadelphia, p. 2,) that Hudson discovered our bay." 

The expression " southwardl}^," was used by me, in refer- 
ence to the course of Hudson from Newfoundland to our 
continent and not to his voyage along our coast. The ex- 
pression, therefore, "southwardly," in the sense I used it, is 
correct. Hudson entered our bay when coming from Vir- 
ginia, and it is true was then pi'oceeding northwardly, as 
stated by Mr. B. 

V. Mr. B. says I am mistaken in saying, that " on the ar- 
rival of De Vries, the bay was called Nieiiwport-Mey, after 
an early Dutch navigator j" and adds — ' De Vries called it 



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Godyn's Bay, after his employer, Godyn. It had been Nieiiw- 
port-Mey seven years previously.' This is too bad. To 
misquote an author, and then assert that he is mistaken as to 
fact, and make the false quotation the ground of a critique ! 

My words are — "In 1630, under the direction of P. De 
Vries, the Dutch extended their settlements up the Delaware, 
on the western side, as far as Bompt Hook, which they call- 
ed Swaandale. The eastern cape of the bay they called Cape 
Mey, after Cornelius Jacobs Mey, an early Dutch American 
navigator. The bjur was named Nieiiwport-Mey, and Go- 
dyn's Bay, from Samuel Godyn, an eminent merchant of 
Amsterdam, who was greatly interested in the first settle- 
ment of the New Netherlands, and is frequently mentioned 
by P. De Vries in his account of the country.'' 

All this is given on the best authority. The brevity 
which I thought proper to observe in my narrative of the 
early settlements of the river, induced me to omit the parti- 
culars respecting the engagement of De Vries with some of the 
Dutch West India Company, who employed him* to make a 
settlement on the south bay; but Mr. Moulton, in his interest- 
ing History of New York, has given it at length (p. 405} j 
and Mr. Barker has abridged it, p. 16, omitting, however, to 
give credit to Mr. M. I did not specify the precise time, 
whether before or after the arrival of De Vries, that the dif- 
ferent names were given to the capes and the bay, because I 
could not ascertain it. 

Mey was certainly an early American navigator, for he 
came to Manhattan with timely supplies, in the year 1623, 
and in that year, or the next, settled on South Bay; but 
there is no proof that Godyn's name was given to the bay 
by De Vries. On this subject I shall treat presently. 

• Mr. B. calls Godyn the " employer" of De Vries, as if there were no 
other persons concerned with him; whereas, Godyn was only one of four of 
the nineteen directors of tlic West India Company, who determined to form 
the; colony on South llivor, and l)c Vrirs accepted of the command of the 
vessel, from tliem, " on condition of his being coequal in every thing with the 
others." The partners were, Godyn, Van Kensselaer, Bloemart, De Laet, 
and De Vries. 



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